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Art Collector Database Larry's List Launches

“Everyone talks about artists and artworks, but little is known about art collectors,” says Magnus Resch, the Berlin/Hong Kong-based entrepreneur behind Larry’s List, a new website aiming to elucidate the mysterious global consortium of art collectors.

Larry’s List database consists of more than 3,000 art collectors from around the world, who are profiled with the necessary information to help galleries and art dealers find new customers. Galleries must pay between $9-19 per profile it views depending on the package, while artists can search their collectors for free. And, despite its name, Resch says Larry’s List has nothing to do with art world behemoth Larry Gagosian.

Put together by a team of 25 art market researchers who scoured 27,000 sources based around the world, Larry’s List claims to be the most comprehensive global research carried out on art collections.

“We want to bring transparency to the art market and here we focus completely on an area which has been untouched so far, which is the art collector scene,” Resch explained.

Resch, who founded an art gallery as a 20 year old before writing his PhD on the art market, says his international studies in Hong Kong and London influenced his belief in localized sources.

“They are all local people, so someone from Indonesia analyses the Indonesian art market by searching through different websites, magazines, offline newspapers and so on to identify art collectors,” Resch said. For now, Larry’s List is headquartered in Hong Kong, home to fairs like Art HK and Art Basel Hong Kong, with regional contributors and an office in Berlin.

Larry's List collector profile page

“The art market is one of last markets in the world to not show transparency,” Resch said. “In emerging markets its interesting to see art collectors are younger and while we have difficulty researching art collectors in the western world, it’s easy to identify them in emerging markets.”

Resch hopes art dealers will purchase profiles to target emerging markets. For example, if a dealer from New York is going to an exhibition in Hong Kong, she will have a way to identify new customers. As to whether art dealers and galleries will be willing to pay for the service remains to be seen.

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Why would a New York dealer go to an exhibition in Hong Kong? Why, if she did, would she be looking for clients? Or do you mean “art fair”? In any case, how does this “list” differ in any way from the dozen or so published lists of the world’s top art collectors, all of which include information about what those collectors collect? Why would Resch claim that it is difficult to research collectors in the West when that information is, in fact, so readily available? And since when is being an art collector the equivalent to being part of a “consortium”? Unless I’m missing something that hasn’t been included here, it seems to me that there are far too many problems with this project.

The founder behind this site, Mr Resch has absolutely no idea about the art market and what goes on within it. Using 23 researchers, means people from Mechanical Turk websites collecting and organizing. This is a failed entrepreneur, multiple times, who is trying again to move around in an area where he does not belong. Hands off.